The contract between Beaver Lake Trust Inc, and T Ford Co Inc, of Georgetown, MA, concerning work to be done by T Ford to repair the Beaver Lake dam spillway has been signed. Arrangements for financing the project via a loan from Country Bank are in their final stages. Preliminary payments to T Ford will be funded by the Beaver Lake Dam Fund, which are funds that have been collected in the form of assessments paid by the members of the Beaver Lake Club Corp, and ongoing assessments of the members will provide the funds to repay the bank loan over the next ten years.

This week, lake abutters should be receiving an official Notice of Intent concerning the spillway repair project. This satisfies the official requirements of notice from state and local authorities.

Mr. Dan Galante, VP of T Ford, is available to keep us fully up to date on the project’s progress. In addition, GEI Consultants will remain engaged as Project Manager—tasked with making sure the work done by T Ford accords with the design drawings approved by the Office of Dam Safety.

Start of the project is now expected to occur on or near to September 18, 2018. Updated information concerning the start date will be provided as soon as it is known, since lake users will have to respond to subsequent changes in the level of the lake by any necessary actions to secure and protect their boats and other items.

Among the first actions to be taken, as the repairs commence, will be placement of a temporary cofferdam into the lake close to the spillway in order to allow the work area to become and remain dry as work on the spillway proceeds. Once the cofferdam is in place, all the boards that now sit above the current outflow will be removed. This will result in a drop of the level of the lake of a bit over 3 and a half feet. With time, this drop in the level will be noted over the entire shoreline of Beaver Lake. This is an unavoidable consequence of the need to protect the work area from input to the lake from rain, springs and other sources of surface and groundwater. Once the project has reached the stage at which the new flashboard device is in place (likely early to mid December), the lake will be allowed to return to its usual winter level.

In a simple way, in order to visualize the effect of this change in the lake level at your location, if you have waterfront property, you could take a yard stick and either walk out or from a boat, place the yard stick into the lake. At the point where the current depth of the water starts to overtop the yard stick, you could assume that that spot will be the “shoreline” that will exist during the time the lake level has been dropped by 3 plus feet.

While there are no guarantees, Dan Galante feels that, based on prior experience, as well as general knowledge concerning how wells are supplied by surface and ground water, the wells on properties adjacent to the lake are unlikely to be adversely impacted by the lake water level drop down.

Please feel free to send any questions or concerns to David Poppel at pops349@yahoo.com